Kenya safaris: face to face with the elephants of Tsavo

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We take off at first light, lifting into a clear blue sky in a two-seater bush plane whose shadow skims across the ground a mere 200ft below. In every direction, small groups of elephants are moving across a sea of thornbush and bare rust-red earth towards an impossibly distant horizon.

The plane is a 51-year-old Piper Super Cub that once belonged to Bill Woodley, last of the old-time Tsavo wardens. Now its pilot is Richard Moller, chief conservation officer of the Tsavo Trust, a not-for-profit organisation working alongside the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) to protect Tsavo’s emblematic elephant herds, in particular the last giant tuskers for which the park is renowned.

Two days ago it had rained, bringing the ashen bush back to life. Now, herds of oryx scud away beneath our wings, long horns laid back across their shoulders, like troops of lancers on patrol, and at one point we pass 500 buffalo trekking towards a waterhole.

An elephant group crossing the road in Tsavo East National Park Photo: Getty Images

After two hours in the air we must have seen at least a thousand elephants. Then Moller spots what we have been looking for: five big bulls, all carrying heavy ivory, including one with tusks that almost touch the ground. As we circle overhead the bull with the biggest tusks thrusts them into the bushes, as if to hide them. “It’s almost as if they know it’s their ivory that gets them killed,” says Moller.

Tsavo has always been classic elephant country and it was primarily for them that it became Kenya’s second national park in 1948. Here, it was hoped, the herds might wander freely and at peace. But in the Seventies and Eighties it became an elephant’s graveyard as poaching reduced their numbers from 44,000 to just 6,000. The worldwide ivory trade ban in 1989 brought a few years’ respite in which Tsavo’s elephant population has increased to about 12,000, but today the poachers are back with a vengeance and KWS is struggling to hold the line. In May last year, poachers killed Satao, one of Africa’s most revered elephants.

Although it is the tuskers that have lured me back, I am thrilled to return to the park I last saw eight years ago. Tsavo is by far the biggest wildlife stronghold in east Africa. It is so big that it is administered as two separate parks, Tsavo West and Tsavo East, sprawling either side of the Nairobi to Mombasa road, which runs through it for 60 miles. Yet compared with the Maasai Mara, it receives far fewer visitors and surprisingly little press coverage.

To get there I flew from Nairobi to Campi ya Kanzi at the foot of the Chyulu Hills, a ravishingly beautiful national park adjoining Tsavo West. The Chyulus are the youngest hills in Africa, flung up around the time Columbus was discovering America – hard to believe when you explore the cathedral stillness of the dripping cloud forests that cloak their summits. Hemingway had them in mind when he wrote Green Hills of Africa, and it is only the black lava flows on their steep flanks that reveal their recent volcanic birth.

Campi ya Kanzi, the home of Luca and Antonella Belpietro, is an exotic blend of Italian style and Maasai chic with enough ecotourism awards to paper a wall. It’s one of a dwindling number of African safari camps that are still family-run, creating the informal atmosphere of a grand Kenyan house party. From here you can go for walks in the cloud forest, look for lions on the Kuku Group Ranch – 400 square miles of wilderness with no other visitors in sight – or do what I did and spend a whole day exploring Tsavo West.

Elephants at a water hole in Tsavo Photo: Alamy

To get there we drive past a giant granite monolith called Longido – the Sharpening Stone. Then, having entered Tsavo at the Chyulu Gate, we watch klipspringers tiptoeing across the mile-wide Shetani Lava Flow before pushing deeper into the park down red dirt roads criss-crossed by the overnight tracks and fresh dung piles of elephant herds.

How could I have forgotten what a wild and wonderful park this is? Lesser kudu with faces like tribal masks stare at us from the roadside thickets. Exquisite golden pipits flutter up in our wake, and whenever we stop I am aware of a silence so profound I can even hear the whirr of sunbirds’ wings as they hover among the acacia blossoms.

We picnic at Roaring Rocks, a stunning viewpoint in the Ngulia Hills, drinking beers, watching the cloud shadows moving across Rhino Valley and looking for elephants in the chaos of tumbled boulders and thorn trees on the plains below.

A dirt road in Tsavo Photo: Alamy

Last stop of the day is Mzima Springs, where rain falling 10 miles away on the Chyulu Hills bubbles up out of the lava at the rate of 60 million gallons a day to create two crystal-clear pools and provide Mombasa’s drinking water. Hippos and crocodiles are the main attraction at this tourist hotspot, sharing the waters with shoals of barbel in the shade of the poolside fever trees.

Next morning I fly to Manyani to meet Alex Hunter, my guide in Tsavo East. Alex is the grandson of J A Hunter, one of the greatest big game hunters of his day, and although he now runs Ol Pejeta Bushcamp in central Kenya, he is keen to show me the park where his safari life began, leading adventurous-minded clients on foot down the Galana River.

Having entered Tsavo East at the Manyani Gate, we stop to climb Mudanda Rock, a beached whale of granite overlooking a waterhole where zebras and a giraffe are drinking.Ahead of us stretches an eternity of grey-green bush bounded by the dim blue wall of the Yatta Plateau.

“Tsavo East is a purist’s park,” says Hunter. “It’s like watching a long day’s cricket. Not everyone’s cup of tea but I love it to bits.”

At last we come to a lugga, a bone-dry watercourse where elephants are tusking in the sand for water, and soon afterwards we spot three lionesses in the shade of an acacia. They are staring intently at a herd of impala on the far side of the lugga, and I wonder if they are descendants of the notorious Man-Eaters of Tsavo that preyed on the workers building the Nairobi to Mombasa railway line in 1898.

We drive all day, heading for Galdessa Safari Camp, and never see another vehicle. Kenya’s tourist trade was still reeling from the aftershock of terrorist attacks by Al-Shabaab, creating the perception that Kenya was off limits. But confidence has been growing and visitors returning since June when the Foreign Office lifted its warning on travel to Mombasa and the country’s favourite beaches.

The Galdessa Safari Camp Photo: Alamy

Galdessa is by far the nicest place to stay in Tsavo East. Flanked by dense groves of doum palms, it lies at the foot of the Yatta Plateau on the banks of the Galana River, whose waters attract wildlife from miles around. At night the camp echoes to the non-stop cacophony of the African bush. Hippos bellow. Eagle owls mutter to each other. In the small hours I awake to the cough of a prowling leopard, and towards dawn I hear lions roaring downstream.

At breakfast I talk with one of the camp staff, a former Waliangulu poacher called Kocha. The Waliangulu were the most famous elephant killers in east Africa. Their bows were even more powerful than those used by the English at Agincourt, and even the Tsavo wardens respected their hunting prowess. I ask Kocha if he had known Bill Woodley. “Yes,” says the old man. “I remember Bwana Bilu. He locked me up for six months.”

From Galdessa we follow the river past Lugard’s Falls, named after the first British governor in east Africa, then peel away south to Satao Camp, marooned in its island of tamarind trees in the middle of the Dika Plains.

Satao is where Richard Moller and I had taken off on our flight in search of Tsavo’s last tuskers. Now, having pinpointed their whereabouts from the air, it’s time to track them down by Land Cruiser – no easy task in a wilderness bigger than Wales. But find them we do, and drive ahead so that they might walk up to us.

Warily they draw closer, huge ears spread wide and trunks held high, vaguely aware of our presence. The biggest bull is well known to Moller. “Already his tusks weigh maybe 90lb a side,” he whispers. “Give him another five years and he’ll be a worthy successor to Satao – if he survives.”

In awe I stare into his wise-seeming eyes. I note his shrunken temples – a sign of old age – and the gleaming ivory that has been the downfall of so many of his comrades. For the past four decades he has wandered freely across the dusty face of Africa. Now for a moment the world stops turning and he stands before me, four-square and formidable, a living monument to a vanishing world.

Then he and his companions catch our wind. They whirl around and are gone, swallowed up by Tsavo’s fathomless thickets.

Essentials

Brian Jackman travelled as a guest of Expert Africa (020 8232 9777; expertafrica.com), which offers an eight-night Big Tusker safari (which can be tailor-made for individual dates and preferences) from £4,657 based on two people sharing. The price includes three nights at Campi ya Kanzi, two nights at Galdessa and two nights at Satao Camp (all full board), private flights, private road transfers and the services of Alex Hunter as your private safari guide throughout your visit to Tsavo East National Park. International overnight flights on Kenya Airways cost extra and start at £701 per person , including taxes.